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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • I ran KDE for a year or so recently. The screen sharing bug, since I rely on screen sharing greatly for work, made me switch to something else. If that hadn’t existed, I’d have probably stuck with it.

    KDE is a great DE, but I’ve always found it more buggy than the rest. It also pushes the envelope, though, and really is a cutting edge DE.

    GNOME might be more “stable”, but I’ve also found you need to have at least a half dozen extensions and GNOME Tweaks to make it usable OOTB. Also, it uses as much RAM just doing nothing as a Windows install.

    KDE has always been “Wow this is cool and very well designed” until I always run into a bug I can’t get past and have to switch. This has been my cycle for half a decade or more:

    1. I hear about KDE’s latest cool features (HDR support was the latest) and give it a try.
    2. I use it for several months.
    3. An update breaks something that is critical to my workflow and I have to switch to something else.

    These days, though, I use Cinnamon. It is the definition of “just works” and other than network management GUI elements being kind of meh (especially for VLANs), I’ve found it to be rock solid.















  • How secure an OS is depends entirely on the configuration. A Linux install can be less secure than Windows or macOS, if configured so.

    Linux tends to be more secure OOTB because distro devs tend to be security conscious. Android is also fairly secure, since it has no root access, sandboxes applications to a degree, and has other hardening employed. However, Android is also very vast and built for various devices by many manufacturers, so it also depends on them.





  • There is no “TV version”. The switch docks to a docking station to make it output to a TV. You just need a docking station and controllers to make a single Switch into a shared screen experience in the living room. Anyone’s Switch can use the dock.

    Physical games are sharable, but only one device can use that game at a time, because they’re physical cartridges.

    Personally, I’d go with a Steam Deck over a Switch, unless your family specifically is looking to play Switch games that are exclusive to it (which technically with emulation the Steam Deck can also play, but that’s not legal unless you own a switch and the game). The nice thing about Steam games is that Steam’s Families feature lets you share the entire game library digitally to 5 family members, so unless they want to play the same game at once, you only buy games once and they can all play them. There are also some games that let you own one copy and let multiple people play multiplayer at once on it, too.

    Plus, games on Steam are cheaper than Switch games and the Steam Deck is only a bit more money upfront than a Switch is, especially on sale, which I expect it to be on sale for Black Friday coming up.

    Finally, Steam games also can be played on a PC. Any PC. The Steam Deck is just an easy to use, skinned UI PC. As such, when the Steam Deck becomes obsolete, you don’t have a bunch of games that are now locked to an obsolete platform. There are PC games that are decades old that still play on PCs today (although sometimes a bit of fiddling is required for REALLY old ones).

    Edit:

    FYI the regular switch and OLED can dock. The switch lite cannot.